Make Them Do The Math
Rule
WHY It Works
Self-conviction. People trust figures they create themselves.
Emotion meets logic. Translating pain into dollars turns a nagging worry into a felt urgency.
Built-in qualification. If the cost is big enough, the budget objection shrinks.
HOW TO IMPLEMENT
Goal: Help the founder see the real price of the status quo.
Surface the pain. “What happens when churn spikes?” Wait and listen.
Quantify with TERRM. Ask for Time, Energy, Resources, Reputation, and Money lost.
Stack the numbers. Repeat their figures aloud and add them up. Pause for impact.
Frame the investment. “So solving a $500k issue would require about 10 percent of that. Make sense?”
Guide prospects to calculate the cost of their own problem. When they put numbers to the pain, they own both the pain and the payoff.
Practice tip: After any discovery question, ask “What do you think that is costing you each month?”
DID YOU DO THIS?
Ask yourself: Did the prospect state a concrete cost of inaction in their own words and numbers?
COMMON PITFALLS
Pitching first. Sharing features before the prospect values the pain.
Accepting “no budget”. If they have not priced the pain, any number seems high.
Doing the math for them. Your spreadsheet convinces you, not them.